Buy and Sell

Posted on Friday, September 25, 2009
Filed under Local Area income, Money Making, Personal Finance

We all like to earn cash, but it's great to have some extra money on the side which doesn't require a lot of effort. Well there are many ways to accomplish this, which I will get to in future blog entries, but for now here is one money making tip that will get you on your way! You wont be getting rich from this one unless you work quite hard at it, but it is possible to get up to and above 100$ a week, I know from experience. Heck, I made 130euro once from about 2 hours work. Now that's what I call easy money.

First, be sure to read my guide to buying second hand items. Now find out local buy and sell websites or magazines in your area. (for this article I'm sticking to face to face buying and selling, not online selling.... perhaps you'll see that in a future post!) If your in Ireland(like myself), I suggest adverts, gumtree, buyandsell . In UK I suggest buyandsell, and for most places I suggest gumtree and craigslist. Google to find as many as these buy and sell sites as you can. I recommend keeping it to 3 or 4 so it's easy to keep track of things.

Now you have those resources, look through the categories in them.Chances are you'll find electronics, furniture, cars, clothes, books, many others. Chances are also that one of these categories will suit you better than the rest. Books might be your thing, but it's not for me. Likewise , electronics is for me, but not for everyone. Anyway, decide your favorite ,what interests you, what you own. If your stuck , I suggest electronics(mainly because it's all I know and you can get the hang of it fast!) . You can even pick a subcategory like laptops, games consoles, mobile phones, or whatever tickles your fancy. I go for any electronics but not big bulky PCs etc.

Well now all you need to do is to buy and sell. Simple? No. It fluctuates like the stock market and you really need to keep track on things for you to make a profit from this money making tip. I'm gonna stick with talking about electronics for now, but other categories can work, I'll describe later.

First I suggest for 2 or 3 weeks , every day, just look at your 3 or 4 sites everyday, go through all items in your category and get a feel for the price of items. I am in the euro zone , so not certain about what its like in the US , but for example, in my country, a PSP second hand should be 75euro , a low spec netbook should be 100 – 120 euro, medium 150euro , high spec 200- 250 euro. An iphone 3g unlocked 8 gig should be 230euro. Old low spec laptop should be under 100euro. And so on. You get the idea. After carrying out this tip”part time” for several months, i get a feel for what price an item should be.

Key tip: depreciation. Don't forget that when apple brought out the iphone 3g s , the price of iphone 3g dropped a bit (second hand we're talking) . This goes for everything. The older something becomes, the less it's worth , and this is very impoprtant to remember.

So when you have a feel for the market and prices and popularity of items, it's time you take action. If you see a PSP going for 50 euro, buy it. It normally sells for 75 euro. Meet the seller, follow my tips on buying second hand , and if your happy with the item, purchase it.

So now read my guide to selling items online here. Upload ads for this PSP on your 3 or 4 sites, and wait. Chances are good that you will make profit on this PSP. Its not much, maybe 20 $ , but it's something. And do this enough times, and all of a sudden you notice the extra cash!

Key tip: Don't buy for the sake of it, make sure you are buying below normal 2nd hand price.

So there is your first little profit. I used PSP as an example, but obviously you can do it with almost anything!

Key tip: Buy something that interests you, because you may be unlucky and end up stuck with it

That's important info. Buy the item as if your buying it for yourself. It happens to me sometimes that I find it hard to offload an item. So i buy something I don't mind having myself, like a PSP!

Here is an elaboration on my 130 euro profit in just a few hours. An acquaintance of mine(who I first met on buyandsell) repairs laptops, and sometimes has cheap ones going. I saw his ad for a high spec dell inspirion laptop, as new, I mailed him, and he sold it to me for just 320euro. I knew in my head that my girlfriend was on the market for a laptop, so if i was left for it, no biggy, my girlfriend would have been delighted to get this at that price.! But I decided to put an ad for it. Started the asking price an 500euro , but I had patience and let it go for 450 euro. That's 130 euro for very little work. Sweet. Super sweet..!

I do this every now and then, on average about once every 2.5 weeks. Laptops, netbooks, ipods, games consoles, mobile phones... consider this to be part time , on the side sort of extra cash if you know what I mean. A friend of mine does this pretty much full time. Like a few items a week. He is making a nice bit of money from this. He mainly sticks with mobile phones.

A friend of a friend started doing this with cars, started off buying a crock for under a grand, sold it making a small profit, did this again and again, buying better and better cars along the way, now he is just finished college ( about 23 yrs old) and is driving a Mercedes Benz. Not bad at all! But the recession has really hit the car industry, first and second hand so I don't know if i recommend trying it with cars.

Key tip: keep within your finances.

Don't just buy a high spec laptop for 1000 hoping to sell it for 1500 , unless you can take a hit like that. My advice is start small, and grow a bit, but not much. I stick under 500euro. Would never go above it because if I couldn't offload it, or if i dropped and broke it , or something bad happened, 500 euro loss would hurt me. That's why I keep it small (normally under 200 euro , although sometimes above).

Well its up to you now, go out there test the water of your preferred catagory, and go in for the kill! I wish you the very best of luck with this money maker, if you have any suggestion or questions comment or email away, and upcoming in future posts, how to make even more money from PSP , another way to make money from psp, now to get more money from xbox 360 , more cash for laptops and other useful hints to ad to your cash generating skills. Have a nice day, and remember , look both ways when crossing a street..! Thanks for reading


Comfy Money

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